KPN, NTT DOCOMO, Rogers, SingTel, Telefónica, Telstra and Vimpelcom have formed an alliance aimed at addressing what they termed “the complex and fragmented nature of the M2M market”.

By increasing scale and cooperating on technology, the partners promised to provide a “unique seamless solution” and offer “better value propositions” to their respective customers.

They also said the collaboration would save costs.

Specifically, the seven propose a global product featuring a unique SIM, a united web interface and a centralized management system.

All of the partners have a service delivery platform supplied by vendor Jasper Wireless, which is providing its Control Center solution to this new collaboraion.

Informa analyst Jamie Moss believes it is an important statement of intent.

“It underscores the two most critical features of the M2M market, the need to establish partnership and the need to focus on ones own core competency for the common benefit of all involved,” he said.

Frost & Sullivan’s Yiru Zhong said the partnership’s ability to address roaming challenges, especially in automotive and logistics, gave it a “A significant advantage” over others.

Other operator alliances include Vodafone-Verizon and Deutsche Telekom-France Telecom-TeliaSonera-Everything Everywhere-Sprint.

However, Zhong said that without the participation of AT&T – another Jasper Wireless customer – the alliance leaves out roaming possibilities in the US. 

According to Analysys Mason, there will be 124.4 million M2M device connections at the end of 2012, growing to 2.1 billion connections by 2021.